Christie may be lying about GWB lane closures

In all of his self-serving statements about the early September George Washington Bridge lane closures in Fort Lee, above, Governor Christie has never spoken under oath. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

The latest developments in the Bridgegate scandal could be a modern spin on the Biblical story of "Samson and De Liar."

"Samson" is Governor Christie's hand-picked Port Authority chairman, David Samson, a powerful New Jersey lawyer who has been called a father figure and mentor to the GOP bully.

After Samson was named to the unsalaried position, his law firm saw a significant increase in fees from lobbying and legal work for developers, NJ Transit and others, WNYC-FM and The Record have reported. 

Christie whitewash

But a day after an "internal" review supposedly cleared Christie of any wrongdoing in the George Washington Bridge lane closures, his Friday news conference brought us no closer to the truth about whether he is "de liar" in everything he's said -- none of it under oath (A-1).

In fact, an "ANALYSIS" on Page 1 today reports "many documents [in the 300-page report] appear to lend at least some credence" to the allegations against Christie (A-1).

Sacrificial officials

Samson resigned Friday, becoming at least the sixth official to take the fall for the governor, whose claim of being lied to by a vindictive staff just doesn't ring true.

The staffer who should resign is Christie's foul-mouthed chief press spokesman, former Star-Ledger reporter Michael Drewniak, a real low-life who made derogatory references to reporters and newspapers covering the scandal.

In reference to Christie's onetime Port Authority crony David Wildstein, Drewniak (rhymes with "maniac") threatened to "claw his eyes out, pour gasoline in the sockets and light them up" (A-6).

But the story and report do not provide any context for the threat.

Wildstein says he told Christie at a 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan about the lane closures as they were happening.

Political payback

Also hard to swallow is the report's claim that Christie "did not create a culture of political retaliation" against Democrats in Fort Lee, Hoboken and Jersey City who refused to endorse his bid for a second term last November.

Let's remember the internal review was led by prominent Republican lawyer Randy Mastro, a $1,000-an-hour practitioner who worked at a discount for Christie, but still managed to roll up a $1 million legal bill to choke taxpayers.

Critics aplenty

The lawyer for Bridget Anne Kelly, who sent the "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee" e-mail as Christie's deputy chief of staff, blasted the report:

"The report's venomous, gratuitous and inappropriate sexist remarks concerning Ms. Kelly have no place in what is alleged to be a professional and independent report," attorney Michael Critchley said (A-1).

Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer says she's willing to go under oath and repeat her claims that Christie officials threatened Sandy aid money to her city.

The report, she said Thursday, is "a one-sided whitewash of serious misconduct by the Christie administration" that was "sadly predictable" (A-1 on Friday).

That says it all.

Photo puzzle

Deputy Assignment Editor Dan Sforza continues to rely on accident photos and captions that provide no real information to readers, but do fill out his thin local news report (L-1).

A story on five people arrested last Sunday in an assault on a Palisades Park parking attendant is missing information on whether the victim worked for a restaurant, bank or other business (L-2).

Editors go to bat for drunks, perverts and gamblers

Hackensack's 2014 Recycling Calendar arrived today -- 24 days into the new year -- inserted into my home-delivered copy of The Record. Better late than never, I guess, but it's a good thing it wasn't inserted into Thursday's paper, which wasn't delivered.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

The Record today delivers more hand-wringing by the editors over whether Super Bowl fans will see the Garden State's best face.

An editorial complains that NJ Transit "is not showing signs of improvement less than two weeks before the Super Bowl" (A-18).

The Woodland Park daily taking the state's mass-transit agency to task for the quality of its bus and rail service is rare, and I cannot recall another instance in the past decade.

N.J. needs column

Every New York City paper, including the lofty Times, has had a subway column examining the quality of service in minute detail.

But Dan Sforza and the other lazy local assignment editors wouldn't be caught dead taking a bus or a train.

So, it has never occurred to any of them to tell a reporter to ride NJ Transit and report on problems, such as standing room only on packed trains and buses during the rush hour.

Toilet bowl

The Super Bowl is expected to bring an unprecedented number of drunks, sexual perverts and gambling addicts together in one place on Feb. 2 in East Rutherford.

In recent weeks or months, The Record has complained that the Route 3 widening won't be finished in time or that the ugly retail-entertainment complex near the stadium won't be repainted before the big game.

Why wait for the weeks or months before Super Bowl to bitch about them? Don't residents deserve better?

New Jersey's image has always sucked and we have always lived in the shadow of New York, but it doesn't help that the wealthy owners of the Giants and the Jets refuse even to acknowledge their teams play in the Garden State.

And Governor Christie has so politicized traffic that the state has become a laughing stock again.

Running in place

Today's paper doesn't add a thing to the Bridgegate scandal, especially Mike Kelly's lame column on Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, one of the Democrats who have complained about the GOP bully's muscle flexing (A-1).

His lead paragraph is a turnoff:

"Dawn Zimmer sits in a chair in a quiet, sun-splashed conference room next to her mayor's office on the second floor of Hoboken's City Hall."

At least the burned-out columnist didn't have her "gazing" out the window or into the distance or whatever, as he has had so many other subjects in the past.

With an intro like that, readers fully expect the reporter with the shit-eating grin will tell them next where City Hall restrooms are located.

More Super Bowl

Page 1 has a Super Bowl weather story, and four more game-related stories appear inside Local (L-3) and on the Sports front (S-1), which is where they all belong.

All this fuss over a game that isn't expected to improve the state's limping economy or affect its higher-than-the-nation unemployment rate.

Great photo

Kudos to freelance photographer Boyd A. Loving for capturing the moments after the driver of an SUV knocked down a 45-year-old pedestrian who was in a marked crosswalk in downtown Ridgewood (L-1).

This photo is so complete it almost looks posed, with even the driver standing outside her vehicle with her hands clasped as she looks serious and concerned.

As usual, no one is identified, likely a good thing here, because the photo, showing the Korean-American woman who was issued a summons for failing to yield to a pedestrian, plays into the stereotype of Asians being bad drivers.

Weather news

Today's Local section continues coverage of this week's "bitter cold," but nowhere will readers find interviews with people who have to work outside, such as New Jersey's unsung gas jockeys.

In Hackensack news, Staff Writer Hannan Adely reports former City Manager Stephen Lo Iacono will receive a $74,683 sick-and-vacation-day payout, while ousted City Clerk Debra Heck is getting a payout of "nearly $32,000" (L-1).

Lo Iacono also is guaranteed payment of his annual salary up to June 14. He was paid $170,516 a year -- about $5,000 less than Christie.

Butter fish

In Better Living, Staff Writer Elisa Ung gives a good-to-excellent rating to Memoire in Ridgewood, where the kitchen overcooked or burned at least three of the dishes she sampled ($16 to $35 each).

The restaurant also shortchanges customers by serving a fillet of artificially colored farmed salmon for $24, and topping it with artery clogging butter (BL-16).

A half-assed assessment of Christie's first term

Route 17 in Paramus, above, and the view through a streaked windshield, below, after about four hours of snowfall today. Municipal crews from Hackensack to Ho-Ho-Kus and Englewood to Elmwood Park will do their usual sloppy job of making streets safe for drivers and pedestrians, but The Record's lazy assignment editors, including Dan Sforza, will merely shrug their shoulders, as their predecessors have for decades.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
Editor

Slapping an "ANALYSIS" bug on today's lead story allows The Record to present a slanted picture of what Governor Christie accomplished in his first term.

The account by Staff Writer John Reitmeyer of the paper's State House Bureau emphasizes "compromise with the Democrats who control the Legislature," and ignores the GOP bully's war on the middle and working classes (A-1).

Rediscovers vetoes

Christie's pledge to "make full use of my veto pen ... to shape legislative and budget policy" is mentioned on A-4 for perhaps the first time since he made it in 2010.

But last year's veto of a hike in the minimum wage, three vetoes of a tax surcharge on millionaires, cuts in funds for women's health care and other mean-spirited budgeting have been redacted by Wrongmeyer.

There also appears to be a major editing error in this long, tortured and poorly written paragraph on A-1 today:

"And amid legislative inquiries into lane closures at the George Washington Bridge -- the biggest crisis of his political career -- and as mayors, including those running Hoboken and Jersey City, accuse Christie of using hardball tactics, his talk of bipartisanship has been replaced by accusations that Democrats have a political ax to grind."

Of course, it's Christie and other Republicans who are grinding political axes to use on Democrats, including Mayor Mark Sokolich of Fort Lee.

Four months late

Why is this story appearing on the day Christie is inaugurated for a second term? Wouldn't even this slanted account have been more useful in the weeks or months before the Nov. 5 election?

Two stories related to the Bridgegate scandal also appear on Page 1 today, including Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno's adamant denial that she used federal Sandy aid as a political weapon in Hoboken.

What else could she possibly say in response to charges by Democratic Mayor Dawn Zimmer that Guadano pushed a redevelopment project represented by Christie crony David Samson, chairman of the Port Authority?

The Record has called on Samson and the other unsalaried commissioners to resign in the wake of the Bridgegate scandal. 

Brain-dead editors

On the Local front today, The Record reports a young Hispanic couple whose bodies were found inside a garaged car had sought "privacy," but closed the overhead door and left the car's engine running until the fuel tank was "bone dry." (L-1).

That scenario was obvious to thousands of readers who saw Monday's A-1 account, which called the deaths of Melissa A. Pereira and Jorge E. Rodriguez a complete mystery.

One has to wonder whether the Sunday assignment editor and copy desk supervisor who helped prepare Monday's story are brain dead.

More errors

On L-3 today, Kwasi Mendoza, 28, who died in the crash of his car in Englewood, is described as a "legal clerk." The proper phrase is "law clerk."

More than two days after the crash, The Record still hasn't asked police whether speed or alcohol was a factor in the crash of Mendoza's Lexus at 3 in the morning on Saturday, near a cemetery.

On Sunday, Staff Writer John Cichowski wrote another error-filled column on Bridgegate, according to a concerned reader who maintains the Facebook page for Road Warrior Bloopers.

"In his Jan. 19 column, the Road Warrior continues with his congestion of mistakes about the Fort Lee toll-lane closure scandal, while mistakenly reporting about traffic and pedestrian safety in Fort Lee.

"All six of the Road Warrior columns that have addressed the toll-lane closure have contained extensive mistakes, which contradict many other news reports, including The Record's."

See the reader's full e-mail to managers and editors, and keep in mind none of his previous e-mails led to corrections by the most-error prone reporter at the Woodland Park daily:

Road Warrior closes access lanes to accuracy